HP is now shipping the HP ENVY 17 3D 1080p Quad Core i7 Laptop. That’s right, the HP ENVY is now not only screaming fast but it comes with 3D too! The specs on this machine are rather impressive. It has a Core i7-720QM process running at 1.6GHz with TurboBoost kicking it up to 2.8GHz, 6GB DDR3, a 500GB 7200RPM HDD, a 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850, a 17.3″ 1080p 3D UltraBrightView Infinity LED LCD, Blu-ray, a TruVision HD Webcam, Wireless-N, a backlit Keyboard and Bluetooth. It comes bundled with 3D Active Shutter Glasses and has Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS. The laptop has an MSRP of $1,599 but our Gear Sponsor… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I’ve come across a few unique bag company’s during my stint here at Gear Diary.  The ones that have really struck me are those who are manufacturing their product from recycled materials.  Add Temple Bags to the list.  The company makes a variety of bags and cases all of which are made of recycled World War II products. Their iPhone case (seen above), which sells for $45, is made with a re-purposed WWII canvas inner lining and features a re-purposed WWII suspender strap as well.  At 2.5″ x 4.5″ it’s really more of a universal pouch so it’ll work with most Blackberry and Android devices too.  It also comes with… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

One of my biggest gripes with cellphone service is that when I’m at home, I have no signal. I have no home phone, so I completely rely on my cellphone when anyone is trying to reach me, and there is nothing worse than paying for big dollar data plan while not having a good connection at your home. Often times city-dwellers have prime coverage for voice and data speeds, especially when thy have HSPA+, 4G, or WiMax in their area. T-Mobile is in the middle of a Top Secret beta test project to greatly enhance 3G data speeds in the homes to specific signal “challenged” customers. An XDA member known as “junkdruggler” placed a service call… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

You’ve got to want an iPad pretty bad to fly all the way from Australia to NYC to get one.  But that’s exactly what a group of fanboys did.  When they got home with their new toys they came up with the Wallee.  This stylish iPad case and wall mount combination was created by a bunch of iPad users.  The Wallee consists of a hard shell plastic case along with a simple wall mount bracket.  It’s available in a variety of colors (white, black, silver, blue and orange) and sells for $49.95 and that includes free shipping world-wide. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It’s been a couple of years since I reviewed a laptop from ZaReason, the UltraLap SR.  Now I’m reviewing something a bit smaller — the ZaReason Terra HD. ZaReason is a different type computer company; every single computer they sell runs Linux, and they only ship Linux (or no operating system at all) on all of their machines.  They care about this to the point where they even include a screwdriver in the box of every machine they sell.  That is because any system you buy is your system, and they feel that you have every right to look at what makes it tick.  That’s one of the… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Most of you have probably seen the Nissan commercial where a new father-to-be laments his ownership of a Z sports coupe after hearing the news his family is growing. He is suddenly struck with the brilliant idea to stretch the Z to a four-door sports car in the form of the Maxima. Flip this same scenario to an Infiniti family and that is exactly the case as we went from G37 coupe to M37 sport sedan recently. No, the rabbit did not die over here at our household but I was treated to the bookends of the 37 series of vehicles Nissan’s luxury division has to offer. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Cooking bacon at home often presents challenges.  If you cook it on top of the stove you’re left to deal with the large amount of grease that continually builds up in the pan while cooking.  If you go the microwave route you’re dealing with paper towels and are limited by the amount you can cook at one time. The As Seen On TV Bacon Wave promises an easy and efficient way to cooking large quantities of bacon with simple clean up. The product claims to uniformly cook up to 14 slices at one time as well as lower both calories, cholesterol and fat. This month I put the Bacon Wave to the Gear Diary… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Gaming is starting to come to the Android platform in earnest as representative of the amount of downloads of the recently released Angry Birds.  Games are really starting to hit Android en-mass.  Just before Angry Birds came out, MHill System let us know about an interesting game for Android called StarXscape. Your mission in StarXscape , if you choose to accept it, is to free the stars that are held captive by the evil Octramon.  You along with your faithful sidekick Krudo will travel galaxy by galaxy freeing the stars held in octacages.  What does that mean as far as game play?  Not as much as I thought initially… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It seems the iPhone on Verizon is a virtual certainly at this point.  I couldn’t help but chuckle when I got the mail today and pulled this AT&T circular from the box because it seems AT&T knows it too.  AT&T sends promotional information often, I still think it’s funny that they do so even though I’m already a subscriber but this one’s all about the iPhone. Pulling a page from Late Night with David Letterman the “magazine” goes on to detail the top 10 reasons the iPhone and AT&T work well together. 1.  Innovative Network – A wireless device strategy that’s designed to deliver the industry’s best combination of mobile broadband and… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

(image courtesy How Stuff Works) Amazon projects a cool demeanor as the leader of the ebook world, but they’re clearly watching (and worrying) about the competition. Between their commercial that digs on the iPad and their new lending options, Amazon is trying hard to match or beat the other ebook players. So it’s not surprising that Amazon was out with a press release this morning bragging about Kindle sales. But what exactly were they bragging about? Well for starters, the newest Kindles are significantly outselling their predecessors. Specifically, Amazon already sold more than they did in the fourth quarter last year. No clear amount, of course, just this vague “well this year was better than… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Ah, the Sony Walkman … that wonderful device that has let parents add ‘hearing loss’ to their list of worries and kids add ‘was listening to my Walkman’ to their reasons to justify ignoring their parents. It was the first mainstream product to really let you take your music anywhere without forcing others to let you know your favorite mix tape included Debby Boone, Christopher Cross and the Bee Gees … well, until you started singing along, anyway. This past week Sony announced they were ending production of the cassette Walkman after 31 years. It might be hard for some to fathom a world in which you actually need to check someone for headphones before… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

In my Virtual City review, I mentioned that one drawback was the SandBox mode was missing, though I also noted it was ‘coming soon’. Well, soon has arrived! Here is some info from G5 Entertainment: What’s New in Version 1.1 – Free Play Mode is now available – Retina Display support improved – Game Center integration added – Performance optimized – Bugs and freezes fixed The iPad version of the game – Virtual City HD – is now available on the App Store! The two screenshots here are from the new SandBox (i.e. Free Play) mode on my iPod Touch. You can see that they have improved the visuals from the previous… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Earlier today the UPS delivery guy dropped off a mophie juice pack powerstation for review. I was psyched. I love mophie’s products and am always happy to check one of them out. After all, mophie’s juicepack air SAVED us last January when we were at CES and needed extra juice for our iPhones. As luck would have it just moments later we got notice that mophie was expanding their reach a bit by introducing a new case for the iPad. The mophie workbook is “the second of several anticipated iPad accessories to be introduced by the brand”. It is also …mophie’s first protective case for the iPad, providing a stylish, fully adjustable folio for Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Who would have thought you could get a 40″ LCD HDTV with BUILT-IN Blu-Ray DVD player for under $1000 dollars? A few years ago that would have seemed impossible, especially with the TV coming from a company like Sony. But that is the case. The Sony BRAVIA KDL-40EX40B is a 40″ LCD HDTV that plays 1080p video and the DVD player plays Blu-ray Discs, DVD-Video disks and DVD-R/DVD-RW disks. And it has a list price of UNDER $1000. Our Gear Sponsor isn’t satisfied with the TV being a penny under $1000 though. No, with this Gear Deal you can get the Sony BRAVIA KDL40EX40B 40″ LCD HDTV with built-in Blu-ray Disc player for $300 off… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Image courtesy of Daniusoft With so many devices being able to replay video these days, converting and encoding is a skill that should be known. Most devices now include software to handle this task for you but sometimes it just doesn’t encode the way you want it to or simply cannot convert from the file type you have. Years ago when the copyright cracking* became an art form, people who wanted to make legal copies of purchased DVDs had to use software such as DVDShrink, DVD decryptrr, and DVD Fab. It used to be a grueling multi-step process which involved different pieces of software to strip the DRM and convert the video to the desired format. This day… Continue reading on Gear Diary …